National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) said yesterday law enforcement personnel would protect legitimate demonstrators during the upcoming cross-strait high-level talks.
During the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee meeting yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator William Lai (賴清德) told Wang that police were over-zealous during demonstrations at the last cross-strait meeting in Taiwan, which took place in Taipei last November. Police confiscating protesters’ flags and illegally entering a road-side store during the demonstrations were two examples, Lai said.
Wang told Lai that police did not confiscate any national flags during demonstrations over the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last November.
“It will not happen in the future either,” Wang said.
“The order we received is to let protesters be seen and heard,” he said.
Wang said he hoped what happened last year would not be repested, but when pressed by Lai, Wang said he was resolute that he would handle the matter better this time around.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chi Kuo-tung (紀國棟) proposed moving the location of the meeting to Yunlin County, which is governed by the DPP, so that a DPP county commissioner would have to take care of the protests held by the party and its supporters.
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) sarcastically proposed holding the event on Kinmen or Matsu, so the DPP and its supporters would be discouraged from staging any protests because of the inconvenience of traveling to the islands.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳), however, said it would be difficult to change the location as both sides had reached a preliminary consensus on holding it in Taichung City in mid to late December.
Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), when asked by Chiu whether people would be banned from accessing the hotel that Chen stays at, waving national flags or chanting political slogans, said the government would not ban people from accessing the hotel or limit their freedom of speech or action “as long as they apply [for a permit to demonstrate] in accordance with the law.”
Chiu, who was struck by police during the last Chiang-Chen meeting, said she would like to know whether she would be hit again and branded a troublemaker if she went to the hotel to have a cup of coffee.
She also criticized the excessive deployment of police officers at the last meeting.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen (盧嘉辰) urged the National Police Agency to fully prepare for the meeting, saying he did not want to see violence again because it would create a bad image for the administration, and mislead the public and the international community.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Office said it would be happy to see both sides of the Taiwan Strait engage in benign interaction, saying it would be conducive to peaceful development in the strait.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office head Wang Yi (王毅) said in Macau on Wednesday that the office would make efforts to expand and deepen cross-strait economic cooperation. Wang said he would push for an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) to normalize and institutionalize economic relations.
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